Seminar 2. Phoneme and its realization in speech. Allophone.

1. A phoneme as a unit of phonology.

A phoneme (/ˈfoʊniːm/) is a unit of sound that distinguishes one word from
another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, the sound patterns /sɪn/ (sin) and /sɪŋ/
(sing) are two separate words that are distinguished by the substitution of one
phoneme, /n/, for another phoneme, /ŋ/. (Two words like this that differ in meaning
through the contrast of a single phoneme form a minimal pair.) In many other
languages, they would be interpreted as exactly the same set of phonemes, and so
/n/ and /ŋ/ would be considered to be the same.
In linguistics, phonemes that are usually established by the use of minimal pairs,
such as kill vs kiss or pat vs bat, are written between slashes: /p/. To show
pronunciation more precisely, linguists use square brackets: [pʰ] (indicating an
aspirated p).
Within linguistics, there are differing views as to exactly what phonemes are and
how a given language should be analyzed in phonemic (or phonematic) terms.
However, a phoneme is generally regarded as an abstraction of a set (or
equivalence class) of speech sounds (phones) that are perceived as equivalent to
each other in a given language. For example, the English k sounds in the words kill
and skill are not identical (as described below), but they are distributional variants
of a single phoneme /k/. Different speech sounds that are realizations of the same
phoneme are known as allophones. Allophonic variation may be conditioned, in
which case a certain phoneme is realized as a certain allophone in particular
phonological environments, or it may otherwise be free, and may then vary
randomly. Therefore, phonemes are often considered to constitute an abstract
underlying representation for segments of words, while speech sounds make up the
corresponding phonetic realization, or the surface form.
2. The method of minimal pairs.
Assignment of speech sounds to phonemes
A simplified procedure for determining whether two sounds represent the same or
different phonemes
A phoneme is a sound or a group of different sounds perceived to have the same
function by speakers of the language or dialect in question. An example is the
English phoneme /k/, which occurs in words such as cat, kit, scat, skit. Although
most native speakers do not notice this, in most English dialects, the "c/k" sounds
in these words are not identical: in About this soundkit (help·info) [kʰɪt], the sound
is aspirated, but in About this soundskill (help·info) [skɪl], it is unaspirated. The
words, therefore, contain different speech sounds, or phones, transcribed [kʰ] for
the aspirated form and.[k] for the unaspirated one. These different sounds are
nonetheless considered to belong to the same phoneme, because if a speaker used
one instead of the other, the meaning of the word would not change: using the
aspirated form [kʰ] in skill might sound odd, but the word would still be
recognized. By contrast, some other sounds would cause a change in meaning if
substituted: for example, substitution of the sound [t] would produce the different
word still, and that sound must therefore be considered to represent a different
phoneme (the phoneme /t/).
The above shows that in English, [k] and [kʰ] are allophones of a single phoneme
/k/. In some languages, however, [kʰ] and [k] are perceived by native speakers as
different sounds, and substituting one for the other can change the meaning of a
word. In those languages, therefore, the two sounds represent different phonemes.
For example, in Icelandic, [kʰ] is the first sound of kátur, meaning "cheerful", but
[k] is the first sound of gátur, meaning "riddles". Icelandic, therefore, has two
separate phonemes /kʰ/ and /k/.
Minimal pairs
A pair of words like kátur and gátur (above) that differ only in one phone is called
a minimal pair for the two alternative phones in question (in this case, [kʰ] and [k]).
The existence of minimal pairs is a common test to decide whether two phones
represent different phonemes or are allophones of the same phoneme.
To take another example, the minimal pair tip and dip illustrates that in English, [t]
and [d] belong to separate phonemes, /t/ and /d/; since both words have different
meanings, English-speakers must be conscious of the distinction between the two
sounds.
In other languages, however, including Korean, both sounds [t] and [d] occur, but
no such minimal pair exists. The lack of minimal pairs distinguishing [t] and [d] in
Korean provides evidence that they are allophones of a single phoneme /t/. The
word /tata/ is pronounced [tada], for example. That is, when they hear this word,
Korean-speakers perceive the same sound in both the beginning and middle of the
word, but English-speakers perceive different sounds in these two locations.
Signed languages, such as American Sign Language (ASL), also have minimal
pairs, differing only in (exactly) one of the signs' parameters: handshape,
movement, location, palm orientation, and nonmanual signal or marker. A minimal
pair may exist in the signed language if the basic sign stays the same, but one of
the parameters changes.
However, the absence of minimal pairs for a given pair of phones does not always
mean that they belong to the same phoneme: they may be so dissimilar
phonetically that it is unlikely for speakers to perceive them as the same sound. For
example, English has no minimal pair for the sounds [h] (as in hat) and [ŋ] (as in
bang), and the fact that they can be shown to be in complementary distribution
could be used to argue for their being allophones of the same phoneme. However,
they are so dissimilar phonetically that they are considered separate phonemes.
Phonologists have sometimes had recourse to "near minimal pairs" to show that
speakers of the language perceive two sounds as significantly different even if no
exact minimal pair exists in the lexicon. It is virtually impossible to find a minimal
pair to distinguish English /ʃ/ from /ʒ/, yet it seems uncontroversial to claim that
the two consonants are distinct phonemes. The two words 'pressure' /ˈprɛʃər/ and
'pleasure' /ˈplɛʒər/ can serve as a near minimal pair.
 The aim of the phonological analysis is, firstly, to determine which differences
of sounds are phonemic and which are non-phonemic and, secondly, to find
the inventory of phonemes of the language.
 As it was mentioned above, phonology has its own methods of investigation.
Semantic method is applied for phonological analysis of both unknown
languages and languages already described. The method is based on a
phonemic rule that phonemes can distinguish words and morphemes when
opposed to one another. It consists in systematic substitution of one sound for
another in order to find out in which cases where the phonetic context remains
the same such replacing leads to a change of meaning. This procedure is called
the commutation test. It consists in finding minimal pairs of words and their
grammatical forms. For example:
1) pen [pen]
2) Ben [ben]
3) gain [gain]
4) cane [kain]
5) ten [ten]
6) den[den]
Minimal pairs are useful for establishing the phonemes of the language. Thus, a
phoneme can only perform its distinctive function if it is opposed to another
phoneme in the same position. Such an opposition is called phonological. Let us
consider the classification of phonological oppositions worked out by N.S.
Trubetzkoy. It is based on the number of distinctive articulatory features
underlying the opposition.
1. If the opposition is based on a single difference in the articulation of two speech
sounds, it is a single phonological opposition, e.g. [p]-[t], as in [pen]-[ten]; bilabial
vs. forelingual, all the other features are the same.
2. If the sounds in distinctive opposition have two differences in their articulation,
the opposition is double one, or a sum of two single oppositions, e.g. [p]-[d], as in
[pen]-[den], 1) bilabial vs. forelingual 2) voiceless-fortis vs. voiced-lenis
3. If there are three articulatory differences, the opposition is triple one, or a sum of
three single oppositions, e.g. [p]- [ð], as in [pei]-[ ðei]: 1) bilabial vs. forelingual,
2) occlusive vs. constrictive, 3) voiceless-fortis vs. voiced-lenis.
 American descriptivists, whose most zealous representative is, perhaps, Zellig
Harris, declare the distributional method to be the only scientific one. At the
same time they declare the semantic method unscientific because they
consider recourse to meaning external to linguistics. Descriptivists consider
the phonemic analysis in terms of distribution. They consider it possible to
discover the phonemes of a language by the rigid application of a
distributional method. It means to group all the sounds pronounced by native
speakers into phoneme according to the laws of phonemic and allophonic
distribution:
1. Allophones of different phonemes occur in the same phonetic context. In this
case their distribution is contrastive.
2. Allophones of the same phoneme(s) never occur in the same phonetic
context. In this case their distribution is complementary.
 There is, however, a third possibility, namely, that the sounds both occur in a
language but the speakers are inconsistent in the way they use them, for
example, калоши-галоши, and [‘ei∫э - ‘егжэ]. In
such cases we must take them as free variants of a single phoneme. We could
explain the case on the basis of sociolinguistics. Thus, there are three types of
distribution: contrastive, complementary and free variation.

3. Allophone. Types of allophones.

Allophone, one of the phonetically distinct variants of a phoneme (q.v.). The
occurrence of one allophone rather than another is usually determined by its
position in the word (initial, final, medial, etc.) or by its phonetic environment.
Speakers of a language often have difficulty in hearing the phonetic differences
between allophones of the same phoneme, because these differences do not serve
to distinguish one word from another. In English the t sounds in the words “hit,”
“tip,” and “little” are allophones; phonemically they are considered to be the same
sound although they are different phonetically in terms of aspiration, voicing, and
point of articulation. In Japanese and some dialects of Chinese, the sounds f and h
are allophones.
In phonology, an allophone (/ˈæləfoʊn/; from the Greek ἄλλος, állos, "other" and
φωνή, phōnē, "voice, sound") is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds, or
phones, or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language.[1]
For example, in English, [t] (as in stop [stɒp]) and the aspirated form [tʰ] (as in top
[ˈtʰɒp]) are allophones for the phoneme /t/, while these two are considered to be
different phonemes in some languages such as Thai and Hindi. On the other hand,
in Spanish, [d] (as in dolor [doˈloɾ]) and [ð] (as in nada [ˈnaða]) are allophones for
the phoneme /d/, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in
English.
The specific allophone selected in a given situation is often predictable from the
phonetic context, with such allophones being called positional variants, but some
allophones occur in free variation. Replacing a sound by another allophone of the
same phoneme usually does not change the meaning of a word, but the result may
sound non-native or even unintelligible.
Native speakers of a given language perceive one phoneme in the language as a
single distinctive sound and are "both unaware of and even shocked by" the
allophone variations that are used to pronounce single phonemes.
Language is an abstract category, it’s an abstraction from speech. Speech is the
reality of a language, thus the phoneme as a language unit is materialized in speech
sound. The phoneme is a sort of generalization (abstraction).
Let us consider the English phoneme /d/. It is an occlusive plosive stop,
forelingual, apical, alveolar, lenis consonant. This is how it sounds in isolation or
in such words as door, darn, down, etc, when it retains its typical articulatory
characteristics. In this case the consonant [d] is called principal allophone.
The allophones which do not undergo any distinguishable changes in speech are
called principal.
Allophones that undergo quite predictable changes under the influence of the
neighboring sounds in different phonetic situations are called subsidiary, e.g.:
a) deal, did, did you - it is slightly palatalized before front vowels and [j];
b) bad pain, bedtime - it is pronounced without any plosion before another stop;
с) sudden, admit - it is pronounced with nasal plosion before [n], [m];
d) dry - it becomes post-alveolar followed by [r];
e) middle - before [l] a literal plosion;
f) breadth - before interdental sounds it becomes dental;
g) dwell - when followed by [w] it becomes labialized;
h) dead - in word final position it’s partly devoiced.
Thus, we see that the allophones mentioned above are all fore-lingual lenis stops,
but they show some differences. The allophones of the same phoneme never occur
in the same phonetic context.
Subsidiary allophones can be positional and combinatory. Positional allophones
are used in certain positions traditionally. For example, the English /1/ is realized
in actual speech as a positional allophone: it is clear in the initial position, and dark
in the terminal position, compare light, let and hill, melt. Russian positional
allophones can be observed in вопль, рубль where terminal /л/ is devoiced after
voiceless /п, б/.
Combinatory allophones appear in the process of speech and result from the
influence of one phoneme upon another.
Native speakers do not observe the difference between the allophones of the same
phoneme. At the same time they realize that allophones of each phoneme possess a
bundle of distinctive features that makes this phoneme functionally different from
all other phonemes of the language. This functionally relevant bundle is called the
invariant of the phoneme. All the allophones of the phoneme /d/ are occlusive,
forelingual, lenis. If occlusive articulation is changed for constrictive one [d] will
be replaced by [z]: e. g. breed - breeze, deal — zeal.
The articulatory features which form the invariant of the phoneme are called
distinctive or relevant.
To extract relevant features of the phoneme we have to oppose it to some other
phoneme in the phonetic context.
If the opposed sounds differ in one articulatory feature and this difference brings
about changes in the meaning this feature is called relevant: for example, port —
court, [p] and [k] are consonants, occlusive, fortis; the only difference being that
[p] is labial and [t] is lingual.
The articulatory features which do not serve to distinguish meaning are called non-
distinctive, irrelevant or redundant. For example, it is impossible to oppose an
aspirated [ph] to a non-aspirated one in the same phonetic context to distinguish
meaning.
We know that anyone who studies a foreign language makes mistakes in the
articulation of sounds. L.V. Shcherba classifies the pronunciation errors as
phonological and phonetic. If an allophone is replaced by an allophone of a
different phoneme the mistake is called phonological. If an allophone of the
phoneme is replaced by another allophone of the same phoneme the mistake is
called phonetic.
 4. Variants of phonemes pronounced in actual speech
5. Types of phological opposition
A phoneme can only perform its distinctive function if it is opposed to another
phoneme (or to no sound) in the same position. Such an opposition is called
distinctive, or phonological. There exist very interesting, but rather com-plicated
classifications of phonological oppositions, such as the one worked out by M. S.
Trubetzkoy in his book Grund- ziige der Phonologie, but, as it is applicable to an
already established phonemic system, a different classi-fication is here proposed
for an initial phonological analysis of a language. This classification is based on
the number of dis-tinctive articulatory features underlying the opposition.
Bilateral (одномерные) anil multilateral oppositions.
In bilateral oppositions p || b, t || d, к || g members of the opposition possess
common features which are characteristic only of the members of this opposition.
In multilateral oppositions features characterizing 2 members of the opposition
may be at the same time characteristic of other members of the system. In i: || ǽ as
which is a multilateral opposition, in Тек || Tƒek, din || pin we see more than one
distinctive feature.
d - oral, apical, plosive, fortis, stop. \
p - oral, bilabial, plosive, fortis, stop,
x - marks the distinctive features.
X1= not bilabial; Х2 = not apical
Multilateral oppositions may be homogenuous and heterogenuous.
Homogenuousoppositions are represented by series of bilateral oppositions: i: || i ||
e || £ || as. A set of determining features is also peculiar to other members of the
system. The extreme members of these oppositions are multilateral [i: ||
as]»between these members we can insert a series of bilateral oppositions.
In к || g we may insert one more member: к [| g || rj = к || g, g j| ij.
Heterogenuos oppositions cannot admit a series of bilateral oppositions between
their extreme members.
Bilateral and multilateral oppositions may be proportional (symmetrical) and
isolated.
A proportional opposition a set of oppositions which correspond in the same
contrast: p : b, s : z, к : g, b : m, d : n, i|. -X -not lenis. In isolated oppositions (r : 1)
we shall not find the same relations between members of other oppositions. The
number of isolated oppositions in the phonological system prevails.
2. Characterizing oppositions as to the relations between the members of the
opposition N. S. Trubetskoy distinguishes:
a) Privative oppositions (one member of the opposition has a certain feature, the
other — has not). The first member is called the marked member. That member of
a bilateral opposition which is characterized by the presence of a relevant feature
which marks the opposition is marked by the presence of that feature. The second
member is the unmarked member of the opposition. In the opposition pin : bin /b/
is marked by the presence of lenis quality and absence of fortis quality.
b) Gradual oppositions possess the same feature in a different degree (e.g. the
difference in a degree of aperture (u : o, i : e). They may possess more than 2
members.
c) Equipollent oppositions (равнозначные) are the oppositions where both
members are equal logically; they are neither privative nor gradual (p : f, f: k). The
number of these oppositions is great. They are not relevant for the investigation of
the phonological system. At present R. Jacobson and Halle single out 14 binary
distinctive features from binary oppositions.
3. Classification of oppositions with reference to the distinctive function of the
members of the opposition.
The oppositions are not always relevant. In some cases distinctive features relevant
in one position are non-relevant in another and have no distinctive function. In the
first case we deal with constant (permanent) opposition, in the second -
neutralized.
Пил : Бил — П || Б relevant in this position;
ДуБ : Пила — Б || П phonologically irrelevant;
П || Б is actual not in every position.
6. Different opinions on the nature of phoneme
The phoneme theory came into being in Russia. It was founded by professor I.A.
Baudoin de Courtenay (1845 – 1929), who was the founder of the Kazan linguistic
school. The fundamental principles of the phoneme theory were worked out by him
during the 1870s. His teaching eventually became known in Western Europe
primarily through his disciples. He was a representer of the so-called psychological
school of linguistics, which was current in his time. According to his theory a
speech sound is a sound of a definite acoustic quality, produced by the organs of
speech. Any given speech sound is incapable of variation. A Phoneme is defined
by him as a group of related sounds of a given language, which are so used in
connected speech, that no one of them ever occurs in positions, which any other
can occupy. Speech sounds which belong to the same phoneme cannot distinguish
one word from another, but phonemes distinguish one word from another in the
same language.
Baudoin de Courtenay's point of view was later developed by his disciple Lev
Scherba (1880 – 1944). He separated phonetics from phonology and stated that
sounds are not only articulatory and acoustic units, but they also possess functional
qualities. Scherba noticed that in actual speech we pronounce a greater variety of
sounds than we are aware of. In every language all these sounds are united in a
comparatively small number of sound types. This sound types are capable of
distinguishing meanings and forms of words. They serve the purpose of social
intercourse. These sound types are called phonemes. And the actual speech sounds
that we pronounce and the individual representing the universal are called
phonemic variant or allophones. Scherba's conception is a truly materialistic theory
of the phoneme. He was the first to define the phoneme as a real independent
distinctive unit, which manifests itself in the form of its allophones.
There are some other views on the nature of the phoneme. From physical point of
view the phoneme is a family of related sounds in which various members of the
family must show articulatory similarity to one another and at the same time no
member of the family may occur in the same phonetic context. This approach
overestimates the material aspect of the phoneme since it views the phoneme as a
group of articulatory similar sounds without any regard to its functional and
abstract aspects. The physical point of view was put forward by Daniel Johnes, he
was the head of London school of phonology. A similar approach is expressed by
the French linguist Ferdinant de Saussure. He viewed the phoneme as a sum of
acoustic impressions and articulatory movements.
The opposite approach is reflected in the so-called functional view. It regards the
phoneme as the minimal sound unit by which meanings may be differenciated
without much regard to actually pronounced speech sounds. According to this
conception the phoneme is not a family of sounds since in every sound not all the
articulatory features are involved in the differenciation of meanings. Only the
features helping differenciate meanings are called distinctive and they make the
phoneme corresponding to them. That's why the approach excludes non-distinctive
features from the phoneme. The approach was first expressed by Nikolay
Trubetskoy, the head of the Prague linguistic school. He defines phoneme as a
unity of phonologically relevant features. He wrote that when the phoneme is
neutralized it becomes an archiphoneme, which is an abstraction combining the
distinctive features common to two phonemes (лук — луг, k and g are one
archiphoneme). According to his view-point both 'k' and 'g' in the Russian words
'luk' and 'lug' represent the archiphoneme 'k', which is neither voiced, nor
voiceless.
A similar view is expressed by American phoneticians, who define the phoneme as
a bunch of distinctive features and as an abstractional fiction.